HurdyGurdyLand

As a single parent I’ve always traveled abroad with both of my children or neither, except for one occasion, when I took my daughter to a wedding in New York. My son had just turned 17, so I felt I had to grab at a last chance before he travels completely independently from his darling mama.

Leaving Storm to attend wall-to-wall festivals back at home, I took Atticus to Norway, land of the Vikings, moose and free love. All Atticus really wanted was to also go to NY, but he took it in his stride when I broke it to him that the letters ORWA were crammed between his dream initials. My Norwegian encompass ‘sykehus’ [hospital] ‘drittsakk’ [shitbag] and the slightly ruder sounding ‘fersken’ [peach]. It’s a great language that is possible to vaguely crack when seen written down - if think logically, get a bit lateral (fersken: furry skin) and think yourself into a kind of imaginary Dark Ages English. For example, ‘pier’ is ‘utstikker’ because it stikks ut into the water. ‘Smertefri’ is ‘painless’ because pain can make your eyes ‘smerte’, but with no pain, you are fri of that aforementioned smerte. A ‘cousin’ is ‘sØsterbarn’ because it’s the bairn of your sister. ‘Grossist’ is not the most revolting, but wholesaler and a ‘hairdresser is frisØr –although it implies a halo of bubble curls every time.

Armed with this stunted but useful vocabulary, we flew to Oslo where we were so smitten by the architecture of the airport it was all we could do not to camp out in the Arrivals Hall for the rest of time. After one last go on the motion-sensor escalators that move only when approached, we boarded a train for Vinstra in the Gudbrandsdalen valley, (although I was sorely tempted to chuck this itinerary in favour of heading to the fantastically named Skaggerak). Our plan is to wind our way north and finish by joining the Sami for their annual marking of the reindeer herds. We race north past dense pine forests, lakes, more pine, rocky outcrops, pine again, fast moving rivers, pretty farms and further pine. ‘These trees are beginning to freak me out’ muttered Atticus in a rare moment away from his headmusic.

We pass the village of Tretten, which translates as Thirteen: the number of people there who survived the plague. It was the arrival of the Black Death in 1349 that stopped the Viking Age in its tracks. Having founded Dublin, sacked Paris and reached America five hundred years before Columbus, Norwegian society collapsed into abject poverty when over half the population perished. The repercussions lasted many hundreds of years: Denmark and later, Sweden ruled over them and Norway only achieved independence once more in 1905, almost six hundred years after the arrival flea-born catastrophe. The population today is still only 4 million and the fact that nobles were reduced to scratching a living alongside their labourers laid the foundations of their classless society and somewhere along the line the Norsemen made the transition from ferocious colonisers to liberal peaceniks.

Some way beyond the back of beyond, we arrive in Vinstra. Although we have been on the train for hours, we haven’t really got at all far in this country whose length is equal to the distance between Paris and Athens. As we step off the train into an empty station Atticus says, ‘This isn’t a holiday; this is just weird.’ He has a point.

[Atticus pictured left, Plutarch in pocket, resorting to narcaleptic fugue & quite ignoring the lovely wild flower bank behind him]
The summer in Norway is incredibly short, but most Norwegians seem to have left for the sunshine of the Mediterranean. Poor Atticus , he had been expecting to be beating off Scandinavian beauties with

a flywhisk. He cheers up a little when our Vinstra host, Mikkel Dubloug arrives and ushers us to a stretch-Volvo with blacked out windows (an unusual model of car for the pimp daddy look). As we belt along, Dubloug points out the occasional royal palace-cum-hunting lodge; they look no different from the surrounding farms.

The Dobloug family farm is the same has the cache of being the birthplace of Per Gynt, Norway’s national semi-fictional folk hero immortalised in an Ibsen play. (While on his deathbed, Ibsen’s nurse assured a visitor that he was a little better, to which Ibsen sputtered, "On the contrary" and died.) The house is small, but truly lovely.
If you have ever been to New England and wondered why the hell old England doesn’t have clapboard houses and red oxide barns, its because architecturally, New England is, more accurately, New Norway. The only difference is that in old Norway, the buildings have turfed roofs out of which sprout shaggy mops of wild grasses and flowers.

Over dinner Mikkel spoke of how much the Norwegians hate the Swedes for the hundreds of years they treated them as backwoods hicks, going to great lengths to give examples of their patronizing snootiness. It is late, so seizing a momentary pause in the conversation; we make our excuses and retire. It is one in the morning, but outside it is still a soft grey twilight. Unable to sleep, we settle down to watch Heroes of Telemark on my computer. (If you’ve never seen it, it is the heroic story of six Norwegian resistance fighters under German occupation, who blew up the Telemark hydroelectricity plant, thus thwarting the Nazis’ dastardly plan to develop nuclear bombs, and all without firing a shot. Incidentally, Knut Haugland, one of Telemark heroes died this Christmas Day aged 92. Having twice been awarded Norway’s highest medal,

he was later a member of the Kon Tiki expedition; all-round groovy fucker.) At the point when Richard Harris’s character snaps at Kirk Douglas’s playboy scientist for fending off mines with a boathook, Atticus hits the stop button, saying, ‘I can’t bear it when people get a hard time for doing the right thing’

After breakfast Mikkel takes us on a tour that follows the mighty Gudebrand River – turquoise from meltwater. A normal river for Norway, but that is bigger than our Thames. Asked what we want to see, I say ‘anything cultural’ but soon realise we are in the hands of a foodie. Our whole day is spent hurtling to different meals.

Arriving in the town of Lom ‘for the bread’, we escape further eating, by heading for the local church [pictured]. ‘I cannot believe I’ve agreed to walk round a church,’ groans Atticus, but once inside, the wooden interior is so lovely, he says, ‘This would be a really lovely place to get married.’ Then he remembers himself and adds, ‘If ever I come back; which I won’t.’

On the long drive back to Per Gynt I battle to steer the conversation away from food lest Mikkel is tempted into further gourmet diversions.

We talk of trolls. We’re not talking Noddy and Big Ears here, this is Norse mythology: trolls were terrifying. Representing everything greedy, cruel, selfish and stupid in man, they were grotesque, huge and ogreish, often with trees growing from their heads – as if the very landscape could suddenly rise up and kill you. Medium-sized trolls merely harmed rather than killed, and the little ones called the Tusser and Nisser trolls

could even be quite helpful - but were extremely easy to offend and were prone to sour milk and stop hens laying.

Next day we drive to into a remote valley to meet a couple living ‘a Viking life’ - with particular emphasis on Viking…food. Their house is high up a boulder-strewn hill; their furniture is rough-hewn logs draped in sheepskins, the room lit by many tallow lights. The husband, a dead ringer for Harry Potter’s Mr Weasley (but Mr Weasley dressed in leather trousers and a large medallion over his buttoned shirt) describes at length the Viking ways. His English is good, but his accent is extremely hard to understand, but eventually we grasp that ‘peek, lark and eon’ are pike, larch and iron. He shows round his beautiful garden planted with only plants that the Viking s used herbs his then shows us handmade drums and the many knives he has fashioned from eon he has forged. This is a great man to know after the collapse of civilisation as we know it, but until then, quietly bonkers. In a converted barn on the Viking compound, the curtain is about to come up on a play by ‘Denmark’s Molière’, but Atticus pinches me really quite hard when they suggest we attend. I lie that we are faint with hunger, so they sit us down and serve us thick broth they call ‘beauty soup’. I’m relieved that Atticus is distracted by his Plutarch as the wife describes it as ‘elk shank boiled for so very long.’ Mr Weasley serenades us on a homemade alpenhorn as we leave; he tears the arse out of Stranger On The Shore. We weep with even stranger pleasure.

On the way back to Vinstra, we pass the village of Hell; it has one house – that’s not even a hamlet in Hades. Driving like a Michael Schumacher on crack, Mikkel takes us over the
mountain where Captain Scott spent the winter acclimatizing himself to Antarctic conditions the year before his doomed attempt on the South Pole in 1911. It is bleakly stunning.

Tree trunks draped in witchy, black moss, the ground carpeted with so much ash-grey lichen that from a distance it looks torched. Norwegians are fiercely proud of the great Amundsen. A Norwegian winning such a famous race and raising the first flag on the South pole gave them a sense of lasting national pride coming as it did, just six years after their long-awaited independence.

Heading north again, we take another long train journey to RØros through endless forests and the occasional seemingly unpeopled village. We read that RØros is ‘a former copper mining town’. Gloom settles in, only relieved for Atticus when a classic blonde beauty boards our carriage. She gets off at the next stop and gloom seeps back. What relief then when RØros, turns out to be enchanting: like steeping into the pages of Hard Times, if written by Lars Dickens. The brightly painted wooden houses, from the smartest to the lowliest, [Atticus right, pictured outside the lowliest] are beautifully preserved; even the slagheaps are listed as a UNESCO world heritage site. The mining company, that once owned the town, built a vast church for their workforce, in which there are far more company motifs than illustrations of the Lord - lest worshippers forget who was in ultimate charge.

At lunch, in a local hotel, we eat python-like sausages and sit next to a table of eight people, eating their pythons in silence. Finns we are told. Our hostess whispers ‘They say nothing, unless they’ve had plenty of drink, then they go crazy and next day are too ashamed to speak. And so it goes on. Silent. Crazy, silent again. It’s incredible when you think Finland’s biggest export is Nokia, with the slogan “connecting people.”' And she settles down with her python.

For small example see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEHPkbOt504

From RØros we head across the border to Sweden.

‘Is there anyone in?’ we call.

No answer is an answer; the Swedes were not at home either.

We stayed at Fjällnäs, a former royal hunting lodge with a stuffed bear in the hall. I made tentative enquiries if the Swedes hate the Norwegians, but it doesn’t seem to be reciprocal. It never is with colonisers.
The main difference I noticed in our short trip there was between the two countries was one of taste. The Swedes decorate their homes in a modern slightly Ikea style, while the Norwegians are more traditional & timeless. If there were interior décor Olympics Norway would trounce Sweden every time. The food at Fjällnäs was delicious: moose steaks, gravadlax, cloudberry soufflés, but night after night it was just me and Atticus and his imaginary friend Tony in a room that could seat further ninety-eight [see photo]. One evening another couple arrive in the hotel - just for dinner - and we are so desperate for company we sit down at the next-door table and force them talk to us.

On the day we are meant to get up at dawn to see the Sami herders branding their reindeer, it is rained off. It rains steadily all day, so we go to the local town where the good burghers are in a state of shock because there had been a spate of burglaries; unheard of events.
We visit the local museum - better than it sounds and here we meet a Mrs Tiggywinkle creature who relates many notable facts about logjams and candlemaking. She also feeds us waffles, tells us about the local bear – bjorn - population and the history of Fjällnäs, how it was built for royal visits from southern castles – or borgs.

It was impossible not to conclude that Bjorn Borg is called Bear Castle in his native tongue.

The next day our reindeer date is postponed again & then finally cancelled.

These hardy nomads can cope with any amount of snow, but summer rain is playing havoc with their plans, and ours. We decide to hike into the hills where the country’s last wild herd of musk-ox live. Majestic, prehistoric and very, very woolly, they butch out winter by standing still; semi-conscious. They weren’t about - carousing in St.Tropez I shouldn't wonder - instead these were thousands of tiny flowers and about 40 billion mosquitoes and midges.

Nature plays a cruel joke on Scandinavians: a tiny summer where everything blooms ravishingly, but the air a dense pointillism of biting insects.

No wonder everyone heads south.

My advice to anyone going Scandinavia for the summer is pack a beekeeper’s outfit & leave teenage sons sweetly snoozing in their beds until you can afford to get them to Manhattan.

Recommended viewing:
http://www.break.com/index/techno-viking-with-captions.html

The above essay was what actually happened when I was sent by Tatler to write a piece about Scandinavia as a secret summer holiday destination for their September issue. I delivered the piece on time but in the meantime the Travel editor went on maternity leave and the main editor, Geordie Greig left to edit The Standard, to be replaced by Catherine Ostler, known to all as Tiny Tears for her habit of pulling the croc. The piece then got heavily rewritten & held over until December because they found some snowy pictures they liked and wanted to use them to illustrate the article. Argument proved futile. Travel journalism for a glossy is hardly 'hard news', but what integrity the piece had with regard to truthfully reporting an experience pretty much went down the tubes. Not only have I never stood on the edge of a fjord swearing that I 'can feel the raw energy of the earth coursing' through my boots, I was sent nowhere near the fjords & I veer away from metaphysical moments accessed through the medium of my footwear.

By strange chance while the December issue was on the newsstands, I found myself at a the same supper party as the pyknician Tiny Tears. I hadn't met her before and I didn’t really meet her there either; she didn’t say hello. In fact, not only did she not say, hello, she sat across the table making it ostentatiously clear that she was discussing me with two other guests. This schoolyard stuff carried on until I was moved to lean across the table and said as politely as possible, ‘Stop being so fucking RUDE.’
The above version of the trip has been comprehensively re-edited so as not to duplicate the words in my Tatler article, but it is what actually happened...in the summer....

A Dunch of Flaws - excerpt

Dear All,

For the past week I have been traveling all over Scandinavia with my son & am still writing up the trip.
So, if you will forgive me, this week I offer you a small excerpt of the new book I am writing. It is the story of a shy, dyslexic boy called Houston Penrose who lives with his family in 1970s Mombasa and to whom terrible things later happen. The novel is called A Dunch of Flaws, the title taken from a Valentine's card my son [also dyslexic] gave me when he was aged about eight. It was a wobbly picture of a bunch of flowers, with that across the top. Please keep in mind the writing has not been buffed at all. I hope you enjoy it.

A Dunch Of Flaws
Excerpt from Chapter One.

The view through the balcony posts was of a dripping, steamy world. Rain from the cloudburst was still pouring steadily from the roof into the covered water butts below. The frog symphony had entered a soft, syncopated movement. Houston saw Joshua emerge from the outhouse. He watched as Joshua stooped to stroke the dogs who were sheltering under the eaves there, but they turned and walked away stiffed-leggedly, as if to be subjected to something so lacking in machismo as a pat affronted them. They were two large Rhodesian ridgebacks; their job was to help the night watchman keep them safe. They did this by barking at bicyclists and fruitbats; beyond that, any relations with the occupants of the house were decidedly cool.Houston took the harmonica away from his mouth and dangled it between his forefinger and thumb wondering whether to drop it into the puddle directly below; a musical apology by way of a mercy killing. He was trying to decide what to do, when a something caught his eye - a butterfly the size of his hand was tacking in his direction. As it stuttered closer and closer, he stopped peddling his legs and kept as still as possible. Seconds later, to his delight, the butterfly had settled on the corner of his harmonica. Very gently, with his other hand, Houston offered a finger towards its legs. Hesitantly, it sidled aboard. He lifted the creature up to eyelevel and examined the beautiful metallic blue of its wings, as they pumped like tiny slowing bellows. Whoomph! A sudden rush of air, a ruffling swirl of speeding wings, and the butterfly was gone. Houston let out an involuntary yelp, unable to grasp immediately what had just happened. He looked about until he finally caught sight of the assailant. A dive-bombing bee-eater had snatched the butterfly and was now on a branch near the top of the mango tree. Two bright, stiff wings stuck out of its beak for a second before the bee-eater tipped it’s head back, opened it’s mouth a fraction and swallowed. Houston peered closely at his finger to see if it had drawn any blood, but no, it had struck its prey with such precision there was no damage, just some dots of pollen that had been shaken from the butterfly’s wings.
‘Darling!’ Houston heard his mother’s call on her third try and scrambled to his feet.
‘Coming Mama!’ he answered and took the stairs three at a time. At the bottom he padded quietly across the sitting room and out of the front door where he was hit by a waft of jasmine. Hadija waved to him from the ladder murmuring, ‘Houston….’

At the far end of the garden Boaz and Joshua were untangling the Chinese lanterns. Nina was tying cushions onto chairs. She turned as she sensed her son’s presence. He held up his finger. ‘A bee-eater snatched a butterfly right out of my hand.’
‘How bold.’ she replied. ‘What was it? A carmine, a Madagascan, a cinnamon-chested?’
‘It was a Lesser-thieving one, Mama’ he said and made her laugh.
‘Help me with these cushions darling. Where’s Gibb?’ ‘He ran over to Jenny Rasbash’s house about an hour ago. They like to swim in the rain.’
‘Well, go to my address book and look up the Rasbash’s number would you? Call and ask them to send him home straight away; we have a mass of things to do. Tell him Jenny can come - that might help.’
‘I thought you’d banned her?’
‘She can’t be sick on the ambassador’s shoes twice, can she? And even if she is, the law of probabilities means it’ll be a different ambassador, surely.’
‘Maybe she could come instead of me?’ suggested Houston. Nina looked at her son for a moment. On the whole, she let him retreat when he wanted, but tonight would not be one of those occasions. ‘Nonsense darling. You’re a teenager, you’ll be fifteen next month. You’ll be fine.’ Houston looked at her, puzzled as to how being a higher number had any connection to an increased enjoyment of meeting strangers. Nina stroked his cheek. ‘Why don’t you help Boaz serve the food? When you have a job, it’s easier.’

Houston shambled off to the telephone in the hall. Cradling the heavy Bakelite handle under his chin, he held the address book close to his face so he could see the writing and dialled. He waited a few minutes and then tried again. After his third try he said, ‘Telephone’s broken Mama.’
‘Not again!’
‘Not ours - we’ve got a dialling tone, I think it’s the Rasbashs’.
‘Well then darling, run over there like a good boy, but put a shirt on, you can’t walk around bare-chested.’
‘Why not?’
‘Why not? Well, because it’s not befitting for the son of the soon-to-be counselor at the British Embassy in Rome to be seen wandering about like a hobo, that’s why not. There should be something in the ironing.’
Houston went out of the back of the house and chose a navy blue t-shirt from the pile. Muthoni and Prudence, the two housemaids championed starch and the shirt made a pleasing ripping sound as he prized the edges apart and wriggled around to stop it feeling as if he was wearing a sandwich board.

As he left the house he took his harmonica out of his pocket and started to practice Summertime once more. Hadija laughed at him ‘Houston,’ she said as she fixed the last loop of her jasmine swag, ‘wewe nsikia mahewa kama mawe.’ [You have the musical ear of a stone] He could still hear Boaz giggling as he reached the gates at the top of the drive.

The Penroses lived at the end of a dirt track in a sleepy corner at the northern end of Twiga Heights. It was one of smartest Mombasa districts, with well-proportioned homes set in enormous gardens - although everything lay concealed from the street. High walls stuck with broken bottles and razor wire shielded the occupants from the cauldron flurry of the city. The road leading from the city centre to Twiga Heights was abundantly potholed and lined with telegraph poles festooned in dense entanglements of cable that explained why the telephone service was so intermittent.

The street was quiet for the time of day; people were only just beginning to emerge into the sunshine and pick their way through the puddles. The usual smells of exhaust fumes, spices, and raw sewage had been dampened by the rain. Houston passed a gaggle woman with buckets balanced on their heads, their kanga-clad sugar-bums undulating rhythmically as they walked. Two of them carried babies so heavily swaddled, their heads appeared like tiny chocolate drops at the centre of gigantic Swiss rolls tied to their backs.
At the junction of the main road a Maasai moran with ghee-burnished skin and long bead-strands slung over his shoulders, stood on one leg, squinting into the middle distance: a cou

ntry boy feigning indifference to the city, the insouciant drape of his red plaid shuka belying his careful styling. On the opposite corner, a pack of shenzi dogs slept in the dust, while a couple of puppies foraged for scraps in the drifts of litter.

The Penrose's house lay a few streets west of Kimathi Avenue, Twiga Height’s main shopping street. The Rasbashs lived a few streets beyond it to the east. Houston exchanged nods with the juice-seller who was singing along softly to a tinny radio tied to the top his fruit-barrow canopy and crossed the road. He dodged in front of a brightly painted truck lacing its way through the water-fille

d ruts and climbed up the four steep steps that led up to boardwalk. He loped past the shady doorways of haberdashers, ironmongers and shoe stores.
The local shops here on Kimathi counterbalanced Mombasa’s bustling centre by conducting their business with the all urgency of continental drift. Opening hours were erratic, stock was always problematic and months could go buy when the shoe store only had size nine galoshes to sell, or the ironmongers had a glut of axe-heads, but no shafts.

At the end of the parade, Mr Ali Kisii, sporting a resplendent hennaed comb-over, lounged in the doorway of his barbershop. ‘Good afternoon Master Houston.’ he said, deftly spinning his scissors round his fingers, ‘where are you off to in the heat of the day?’
‘I have to fetch my brother, we’re having a party tonight.’
‘A party? We are too: a big barbecue for my nephew’s engagement.’
‘Ours is a leaving party.’
Ali Kisii looked shocked. ‘You are not leaving?’
‘Yes.’ Houston looked at the ground. ‘It’s very sad.’ He didn’t really like saying it out loud. ‘My father has a new posting.’ A taxi tore by, pressing his horns instead of his brakes; forcing them to pause their conversation for a moment. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To Rome.’
‘Rome! My god above! Well, at least if I ever get tired of going to Mecca, I know that I can come and visit you in the home of that devil the Pope. When are you going?’

‘Not until the end of school term. We’re having the party now because everything will be packed up by then – my mother’s already made a start.’ ‘Yes surely, surely.’ Ali Kisii said vaguely, he was sizing up a rotund old man walking down the boardwalk towards them. Houston gave him a small wave and carried on. ‘Maybe you need a haircut!’ Ali Kisii called after him. ‘It is a wonder you can see where you're going, if I may say.’
‘It’s the fashion Mr Kisii’ Houston replied, turning and walking backwards.

Ali Kisii flipped the scissors upside down and held the handles to his eyes like lorgnettes. ‘Well if I may say so, it is most definitely a lady fashion you have stumbled upon in error.’

Houston smiled. ‘Perhaps tomorrow.’

But Ali Kisii and turned his concentration to the portly man who had crossed the street and was studying the price list that hung in the barbershop window beside illustrations of the hairstyles.

When Houston reached the Rasbashs’, he rattled the gate until the guard arrived and let him in. He walked straight to the pool, which was round the side of the house, hidden from view by oleander bushes. There was no one there.

Music started blasting out of the Rasbashs’ sitting room window, so he walked over to the front door and knocked. The music was far too loud for anyone to hear him, so after a minute, he turned the handle and went in.
Susan Rasbash was dancing around the sitting room, dressed in a long pink kaftan and matching turban. She swooped around the room, arms weaving, her eyes lightly shut behind oversized sunglasses. Houston froze in the doorway overcome with embarrassment. He coughed, but she remained unaware of him. The room Finally, when a crackly hush descended upon the room between tracks, he coughed again. Susan Rasbash turned and fixed him with a steady gaze, showing no sign on surprise.

‘Well looky here, sneaking up like a handsome spy, Houston Penrose.’ Almost immediately, his head felt it might explode from the surfeit of blood that had disobediently rushed there. Voluptuous orange painted lips parted and she grinned at him, pushing back the sleeves of her kaftan to fiddle with complicated earrings that had caught on the turban. She had remarkably hairy arms.

His mother said everyone got hairier in the Tropics, but Houston had read in his Look and Learn comic that body hair helped keep the body warm and put it to her that people should really get balder. She had been unable to explain to his satisfaction, why it was the opposite and if the hair grew to provide the surface shade, or if the greenhouse heat just sent the follicles into wonky overdrive. They both agreed it was a strange phenomenon manifested particularly strongly in Mrs Rasbash and why it had earned her the nickname Hirsute Sue.

‘Wasn’t that pivotal?’ She sighed in a glorious manner. ‘That was the title track. It’s my favourite I think. My sister sent it to me. It’s a smash hit in England. Look!’ And she marched over to the side-table, grabbed the album cover and strode over, waving it at him. ‘It’s called Aladdin Sane. Do you get it?’ Houston dragged his eyes away from her arms and stared blankly at a photograph of a bare shouldered man with a lightning flash painted down his face. What was he meant to ‘get’?
‘Er’ he said.
‘He’s saying he’s mental ! Aladdin Sane: A lad insane. You see?’ she cried jabbing her finger along the title.
What he wanted to say was ‘It’s you who’s acting mental Mrs Rasbash, could you stop because it’s scaring me’ but instead he said, ‘He does look a bit loony, yes.’
‘Oh no, no, you’re wrong there!’ She said fiercely, striding back to the record player. ‘Bowie’s a goddamn genius.’ He felt lost and alone in uncharted Rasbash territory, where it was alright for her to call a singer mad, but not him. She settled the needle back down and it crackled into the opening bars of a lazy guitar strum. He surfed a wave of dread that she might start dancing again and resolved to get away as soon as he could.
‘I need to find Gibb!’ he said, raising his voice over the swelling music. She swayed a bit, but thankfully this next song was a ballad. ‘My mother needs him to help with the party.’
‘Oh sure, the party. Gary and I are coming. You must be pretty excited about going to Italy.’ She looked into the middle distance. ‘What I wouldn’t give to live there.’ Houston shrugged. All the grown ups said the same thing to him, but all he felt was sad and nervous. He would miss their house and he would miss Boaz. He thought he should probably miss Joshua, but his English was very bad, so they never really spoke much; not like Boaz.

He didn’t really want to talk to Susan Rasbash about it, so instead he said, ‘Is Gibb here?’
‘No.’ she replied. ‘But they’ll be back soon. They went with Clarence to see the fire.’

‘The fire?’ Houston knew nothing about a fire.

‘The Malaika bangle factory burned down last night. They’ve gone to see what’s left. Good riddance I say!’ Susan Rasbash picked up a glass and took a long, noisy draught. She waved the glass at Houston and said, ‘Straightener?’
‘No thank you Mrs Rasbash.’
She shrugged and poured herself some more Campari and lifted the glass to him in a lazy salute. He was beginning to panic a bit. Could he leave a message for Gibb, or should he wait? He wasn’t sure how long he was going to manage being on his own with Mrs Rasbash in this mood.

‘Yes, we read about it in the paper this morning. I imagine that cloudburst probably put the last of it out.’ She grabbed the Daily Nation off her coffee table. ‘Listen to this,’ she said, tapping a Rooster cigarette out of a soft packet and lighting it. ‘“The Malaika Factory, Mombasa's most visited tourist site after Fort Jesus.” Most visited site? They must be mad! It was only visited it because that gigantic neon hand was an easy landmark for people to meet. Where was I? “…was destroyed in an inferno last night. The destruction of the bangle factory is not only a great blow to local jobs but also a loss to Mombasa’s rich and diverse heritage. Six fire engines attended. Foul play is not suspected” It’s unbelievable!’ She threw the paper down in disgust. ‘It goes on to describe it as some sort of tragedy for jewelers everywhere and a cultural cataclysm for rest of humanity’s wrists. Everyone knows that place was the wretched black heart of child labour in East Africa! I’m glad it burned.’
‘Mrs Rasbash?’ he interrupted.
‘What?’
‘Your telephone isn’t working.’
‘Damn and blast! Not again!’ and she strode out onto her front porch, arms folded, propelling him forward in the bow wake of her indignation. She gestured beyond her property.
‘Just look at it, I mean, really.’ In the line of telegraph poles in her street, the nearest one to her house was missing.
‘Did it fall over?’ Houston asked.
‘Who knows? It might have been struck by lightning, or been chopped up for firewood, or stolen to make a boat mast. Instead of replacing it, those idiot telephone engineers have simply draped the cable between the trees. Do you see?’ It was true, the wires sagged so badly, they almost touched the ground. ‘Even if I could call for help no one would come. I’ve no bloody idea what I would do with myself in this godforsaken country if it wasn’t for Rasputin.’
‘Rasputin?’
‘Yes, Rasputin. Pet tortoise. He means the world to me. Keeps me calm.'
Mrs Rasbash ushered Houston back into the house and ranted on about the telephone system, Rasputin, David Bowie, the bangle factory and much else besides until, to his great relief he heard the crunch of a car arriving and the slamming of doors.

Gibb swaggered into the house and clapped his brother on the back. ‘You missed a trip Houston. The Malaika Factory is completely burned out. It’s still smouldering man.’
‘We have to get home Gibb.’ Jenny, who had followed behind Gibb and gave Houston a friendly wave.

‘Hey Jenny.’

‘Hey Houston, looking forward to tonight?’
‘Not really, but Mama says you are invited over as well. You can come now, if you like.’
‘That’s nice of her after the....’ she stopped herself and glanced quickly at her mother. She looked down at her gingham shift and swiped at some smut marks.
‘I’ll come later with Mum and Dad, if you don’t mind. My hair reeks of burnt plastic. I need to change.’

Houston had spent quite enough time at the Rasbashes’ house and started pulling Gibb towards the door. ‘We have to get back. Mama needs our help. She sent me to fetch you. I’ve been waiting for hours.’
‘Ok. See you later’ said Gibb, blowing Jenny a nonchalant kiss. ‘Thanks for the beer Mrs Rasbash.’
‘My pleasure Gibb’ said Mrs Rasbash.
‘She gave you a beer?’ said Houston, as soon as they were in the drive and out of earshot.
‘Yep, earlier she did, two in fact’ said Gibb. ‘Don’t tell Mama.’
‘I won’t. She offered me a gin or something.’
‘You? Blimey. Jenny says her mum gets "coast crazy" and her dad has to take her upcountry to get her calmed down.’
‘Might be time for them to take that trip’ said Houston, and they strolled past the telephone cables in silence.